


Backpack

by jenny_of_oldstones



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-06 22:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6772579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenny_of_oldstones/pseuds/jenny_of_oldstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas pays the price of being the only party member with reasonable travel gear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backpack

"Solas, would you mind…..” Trevelyan held out a handful of freshly-cut elfroot.

“Not at all, Herald,” said Solas and unshouldered his pack. The itchy, hairy plant stalks poked and tickled the back of his neck all the way to Skyhold, but he was happy to lend a helping hand.

“Uh, Chuckles, I hate to ask….” Varric stood in front of a parchment merchant in Val Royeaux, eying a leather-bound journal.

“Of course, Master Tethras.” Solas forced himself to throw out an old, though admittedly still good cooking pot to make room for two journals and an inkwell. The latter spilled and soaked his back before they even left the city gates, to which Solas tightened his smile and assured Varric that he needed a new tunic anyway.

“My friend…..” Cassandra’s toe traced a circle in the dirt of Adamant's bailey as the party saddled their horses. Solas could not see what was held behind her back, and by this point did not need to.

“Let me guess," he said. "Seeker armor does not come with pockets.”

“It's a first-edition." She bit her lip. "A gift from Hawke. And he signed it before he left…”

Solas closed his eyes and listened to the screams of the wounded and dying floating in from the fortress's sick bay. The Wardens had created a hell of their own design through sheer blunt-force stupidity—much in the manner that he had.

“Fine,” he snapped and took her Tale of the Champion. He crammed it under his grimoire, the corner digging into his spine for the next three days as they recrossed the Approach.

One night, while on watch beneath a sheltering stone while the cold wind of the Hissing Wastes scattered the embers of their fire, Solas reflected that after almost a year with the Inquisition and he was still the only member of the inner circle with a decent travel bag. The others had belts and bandoliers for potions and oils, but somehow he was the only one shouldering every piece of trash they picked up on the road.

In short, he was still incapable of learning his lesson.

He dumped out his pack on the sand. Vivienne’s makeup she’d purchased in Val Royeaux, a pretty fossil Trevelyan had discovered in a dry riverbed, a piece of oblong marble the Iron Bull had bartered from a desert caravan that Solas now handled with a handerkerchief—all of it. Then, one by one, he walked among his companions and set their trifles beside them.

“Might I inquire, my dear, as to the meaning of this?” said Vivienne the next morning. She held up her frozen bottle of face cream.

“I simply think you capable of carrying your own wares,” said Solas delicately. He cracked a snake egg with his fingernail and drank from it like a teacup. “All of you.”

By the end of the day, his friends’ precious curios had all but been abandoned. All except for Cassandra's. She stood on a pale dune frowning down at the book in her hands: a signed copy of The Tale of the Champion, dog-eared and well-loved.

Solas sighed. “Give it here.”

Cassandra’s face lit up. “Thank you, Solas. I will take your watch duty tonight, and all nights until we return home.”

“That will not be…” Solas dug his fingers into his aching back. “Oh, very well.”

It was the last time, he swore, that he'd allow himself to be a pack mule for anyone. At least until Cassandra called him over to a roadside book merchant on the way back to Skyhold and held up a heretical copy of Rethinking the Fade and Its Citizens.

For her, he supposed, tugging the drawstrings of his bag for her to drop the book in, he would continue to make an exception.


End file.
